Tell Tale (18 page)

Two hours later, lunch intervening, and they were back in the interview room, Howson now keen to give them more information.

‘Five hundred quid. Each time. Easy money.’ Howson leant back, and locked his hands behind his head. ‘No-fucking-brainer to take the job, wasn’t it?’

‘You were paid to kill the ponies?’ Riley was asking the questions now, Davies bent over in his chair, a pen doubling as a cigarette.

Howson nodded. ‘Yeah. We had to kill them and then slash them up a bit. Light those fires in a specific pattern. We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing to be honest. Never knew it was anything to do with devil worship until we read it in the papers. Then we thought the whole thing was a bit of a laugh. We had a powwow and decided we’d carry on doing it as long as it wasn’t too risky. After all, she paid us upfront. She was only going to give us a hundred a time to start with, but I figured we’d start at five hundred and meet somewhere in the middle. She just stumped up the money right away.’

‘She?’

Howson nodded. ‘Yeah, and she were a right babe too.’

Riley glanced at Davies, wondering if he was thinking the same: this had to be the Peacock woman.

‘And what exactly were the instructions?’

‘We had to catch a pony and take it to one of three specific locations. Then we had to kill the animal, cut off its bollocks, and light those fires. We had to finish with the location where you lot nabbed us.’

‘And you didn’t ask why?’

‘No. Like I say, this woman was a complete babe. And there was the money, too, wasn’t there?’

‘And killing the ponies, you didn’t flinch at that?’

‘To be honest, I did. It was also a right faff catching the buggers. And when we killed the first one the blood went everywhere. We got a bit wise for number two and three and wore old clothing.’

Riley continued. ‘OK, so the big question is, who is “she”?’

‘I don’t know her name.’

‘Come on, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?’

‘It’s the truth. All I can tell you is that she were classy.’

Riley looked across at Davies and raised his eyebrows. Davies nodded and pushed back his chair and left the room. Five minutes later, he was back with a couple of printouts. He shoved the first one across the table and Howson peered down.

‘What?’ Howson shook his head. ‘I told you she were a babe, not that piece of old scrag.’

‘Are you sure?’ Riley exchanged a look with Davies.

‘Course I am, she’s not classy anyway, you daft c—’

‘What about this one?’ Davies slid the next photograph over to Howson.

‘Yes, that’s her. Told you she were a looker, didn’t I?’

Davies pulled the piece of paper back and rotated it so the picture of the girl sat on the table in front of Riley.

Riley stared down at the picture of Anasztáz Róka. Then he turned to Davies and lowered his voice. ‘Bloody hell. What on earth do we do now?’

Irina worked out the angles carefully before she even attempted the move. This wasn’t like a gymnastics competition. The floor was wooden with no padding, no deep mats to cushion a fall. When she’d been a child her gym teacher had forced her to repeat tumbles or vaults over and over again, even if she showed little sign of succeeding. ‘Eventually it will click,’ she’d say. ‘Until then, you do the move again.’ Here, the only thing clicking would be her back giving out as she smashed into the floor.

First she removed her shoes. Then she took off her tights and bundled them into a corner of the room. The nylon would be slippery and bare feet would give her soles more purchase. Next she went over to the side of the room and picked up the piece of wood she’d found earlier. She dragged the plank across the room and propped it up against one wall. The wood was riddled with worm holes, the surface pitted with dry rot, but it was all she had. With the plank in place, she paced out the strides. Four and a half. The half gave her time to accelerate, three more to build up power and full speed, the final stride being her foot on the plank at the wall. She walked back and forth across the room, visualising the way she’d hit the plank and continue vertically. Something like a wall of death motorbike rider.

A metre or so above where the plank leaned against the wall, a beam jutted out. If she could get her foot on that then she could propel herself even higher and make a leap for one of the cross-members of the roof truss. Up there she’d be able to climb and reach the roof, perhaps force her way out.

Irina stood by the far wall and took a breath. Then another. Then she ran.

One, two, three, foot on the plank, pushing hard, next foot on the beam and a final push upward.

She floated in space, her body twisting in mid-air as she pirouetted round, both hands outstretched as if she was mid-way between a set of asymmetric bars. For a moment she thought she heard her gym instructor shouting her name. And then her wrists smashed into the truss. She’d flown too high. She flailed and with one hand managed to grasp the beam, her body swinging violently across the space. She gripped hard, feeling splinters of wood rip into her skin, then she reached up with the other arm and grasped with both hands. She swung forward and then back, pushing on the upswing until she could fold herself over the beam and bring her legs up. Finally, she was sitting astride the truss.

First time, she thought. No repetitions required! She paused for a moment to get her breath back. Her heart was beating fast and she needed to regain her composure. One silly mistake now, one little slip, and it would all be over.

Irina peered up at the tangle of beams above. Now she could do it. She took another deep breath and then began to climb up through the latticework. When she reached the top, she pushed against the corrugated iron roof. It rattled loosely. She turned herself so she could kick out with one leg. Bang. Bang. Bang. A nail gave way and then another. The sheet of metal flapped open, daylight beyond. She wriggled up and eased between the sheets, bending one back so the sharp edge didn’t cut her. In a few moments she sat outside on the roof, the heavy green foliage of pine trees all around.

She paused and listened. The treetops swished in the breeze but there was nothing else. She checked her pocket, feeling the bulge of Ana’s notebook. Evidence, she thought. Evidence which she hoped would put Ana’s killer behind bars. And yet, even as she recalled the shocking truth Ana had written in the notebook’s pages, could she be sure of that? And if she could be sure, would it be enough? Irina shook her head. No, either way she couldn’t take the risk.

She turned round, raised her feet, and slid down the roof. At the edge she bounced off and into space, flying free for a moment before she somersaulted and hit the ground running.

Frey, it turned out, owned a light aircraft based in North Devon and ‘up for it’ meant exactly what he’d said. They left Plymouth, driving north and skirting the western side of Dartmoor. Then they headed for Okehampton and Winkleigh. Up here the countryside was flat and quiet. Empty lanes with nothing more than the occasional tractor bumping along. This was an area far from the tourist trails, far from beaches and attractions. No worse for that, Savage thought.

‘Here we are,’ Frey said as they turned off a lane and into a small car park, a clubhouse at one end. ‘Basic facilities, but a friendlier bunch you’ll not find.’

Frey stopped the car. There was no sign of any airfield that Savage could make out. Just a strip of grass with some planes parked at one end. A red helicopter standing on a patch of concrete.

‘The air ambulance,’ Savage said. ‘I thought it was based at Exeter.’

‘One aircraft there and one here. This spot is an excellent location for covering the North Devon coast, as well as Dartmoor.’

They got out of the car and Frey went into the clubhouse. Savage stood and watched a little plane trundle down a taxiway, pause for a moment, and then race down the grass runway and surge into the air. She swallowed and felt butterflies in her stomach as the plane’s wings tilted this way and that, before the aircraft banked to the right and quickly became a mere dot against the bright sky.

‘Shit,’ Savage muttered to herself, wondering if she’d made a mistake coming along with Frey. She didn’t mind flying – as long as there was something solid under your feet, an in-flight movie, and a glass of something stronger than water in her hand.

‘Alright?’ Frey hailed her from the entrance to the clubhouse and gestured to the line of planes parked at one end of the field. ‘She’s all prepped and ready to go. I’ll take you over and give you a quick briefing and then we’ll get airborne. How does that sound?’

‘It sounds bloody scary, Nigel,’ Savage said. ‘If I’ve got to be buffeted by the wind I prefer to do so down at sea level, wearing a life-jacket and attached to a safety line.’

Frey led them around the edge of the field and stopped next to a small aircraft.

‘Here she is. A Socata TB.’ There didn’t seem to be much more room inside than in Savage’s little MG. ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’

Frey spent a few minutes checking over the aircraft, explaining that even though the plane had been made ready by a couple of club members it was his responsibility to ensure she was air-worthy. The safety briefing Frey gave her was over all too quickly. Frey cocked his head as Savage bit her lip.

‘Don’t worry, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘You can’t fall overboard, there are no ropes to get tangled in, no boom to smack you on the head and as long as you have a good forecast you can’t get caught out by the weather because you’re not crawling along at five knots.’

Frey buckled Savage in, helped her with a set of headphones and talked through the instruments in front of them. Then he was on the radio, getting clearance for take-off.

The engine started and the plane shuddered as the prop whirred into life. Frey made some adjustments and a minute later they were taxiing down the undulating grass to the end of the runway. Then he swung the plane round and stopped. He made a final call on the radio, a visual check of the sky and the ground, and then they were rolling forwards. The engine noise increased and halfway down the runway, at a speed which seemed to Savage not much faster than a car, Frey was pulling back on the wheel.

Savage couldn’t help but let out a gasp as she first felt her weight increase and then for a moment experienced a sensation of weightlessness. The ground fell away and as Frey banked the plane she thought they would slide sideways. Instead they rose farther and levelled out.

‘Wow!’ Savage stared out and down at the fields and hedges rushing by below. She looked across at Frey. ‘I can see why you like this.’

Frey nodded as they rose higher and higher. Ahead, the mass of Dartmoor bubbled up from the flat landscape, a huge behemoth of brown spreading across the green fields.

‘Big, isn’t it?’ Frey said. ‘From up here you get a real sense of what an amazing wilderness we have right on our doorstep.’

‘Fernworthy?’ Savage said, gesturing through the front windscreen. They were high enough now that she could spot the area of green on the east side of the moor where a glint of blue shone in the sunlight.

‘Easy to see in the daytime. At night you might well be on instruments. Still, with GPS, finding the reservoir wouldn’t be difficult. We’ll go north, circle round, and come in as if we were on a flight path from Exeter to Newquay.’

Frey made a slight turn to the left and the plane banked and headed east. The moor came up below them and Savage was surprised how quickly they’d reached it.

‘What’s our speed?’ she said.

‘Hundred and twenty knots. Say they took off from Exeter, we’re looking at five minutes to reach the reservoir. Another twenty to get to Newquay. Unless they pissed around over the reservoir, but that would defeat the purpose of the subterfuge.’

They were high over Dartmoor now. Frey fiddled with the GPS unit and then they were banking again, this time to the right, making a full one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

‘Lining up on the waypoint,’ Frey said.

Below, the moor had given way to fields and a little village Savage thought might be Chagford. Through the front windscreen, the green and blue of Fernworthy loomed again. Frey took the plane lower and now Savage could see the moorland rushing by below. A group of ponies looked up, startled, and then broke into a gallop, the herd scattering in several directions.

‘Jesus, Nigel!’ The ground flashed past and she felt a surge of vertigo. ‘Do we need to be this low?’

Frey nodded, but didn’t say anything. The reservoir was up ahead, a cluster of cars in the car park, Savage noting an ice cream van with a queue of families. Then they were over the water for a few seconds before they swept across the far shoreline.

‘Now,’ Frey said. ‘Two, three, four, five, now.’

As soon as he had uttered the second ‘now’ he pulled back on the wheel and the plane rose, Savage feeling the seat press into her thighs.

‘Six seconds,’ Savage said. ‘Bag, two, three, four, five, girl. Seems about right. The door is opened, they kick the bag out, and then tip the girl. Only, they did it all too late.’

‘They probably didn’t count on the girl falling so far. However she was moving at a hundred and twenty knots, so her trajectory would have taken her from above the lake and into the trees. Possibly the plane had also begun to rise, giving the body a little upward push as well. At some point the tie-down fell out too. That was a mistake and could well be a vital piece of evidence. First thing would be to find an aeroplane with a set of tie-downs that are the same as the one we found. Layton might even be able to match the oil on the tie-down strapping to the type used in the plane.’ Frey turned the wheel and the plane banked hard to the right. He looked across at Savage and smiled. ‘And we might as well start looking for that plane close to home, OK?’

Savage nodded as sky and earth rotated, the horizon anything but level.

‘Nigel,’ she said. ‘Could you just concentrate on
getting
home please?’